Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

A) "This is a great day that shows just how far our country has come."B) "While I applaud the choice of a woman of color for this position, I have reservations about her record and political leanings."C) "HE HUGGED HER THAT ASSHOLE HE HATES WOMEN."

Wow. At least he’s not beheading her or something.Uh... yeah. Yeah, that's a good thing. It's probably just political though; he knows if he beheads her now the confirmation process is going to be a nightmare.

If that man ever tried to touch me I’d make sure I pissed all over myself before hand. And I’d hold him tight and linger. I’d actually like to change a messy tampon and shake his hand right after. No washing.Is this your politics or just your fetish?

And of course it’s paternalist. Do you actually suggest there’s no power differential between a dude President of the United States and a female Hispanic judge upon whom He bestoweth shit?I dunno, man, beats the hell out of not bestowething shit.

If nominating someone to the Supreme Court is an insult to their race and gender, fuck, I don't know what would be a compliment.

First comment at Twisty's place: Picture it in a world where dudes hug each other without cringing. Not that such a world could ever exist.I love this. Apparently, post-patriarchy, post-racism, post-whatever, men will still be unable to hug without cringing. I guess she's arguing, I don't know, determinism.

It's good to call out craziness. I've got Twisty fatigue, that's my problem. For a while I could read that site and say "Whoa, that's...special. I'm going to get some popcorn. You need anything, Twizzler? Rasinets?" But after a while the crazy hateful (and the 'I didn't say anything hateful, you must be illiterate') just stopped being offensive in a way I found entertaining and started depressing the hell out of me.

Don Gwinn, yeah really. I've seen plenty of dudes hug each other without "cringing," in all different sorts of circumstances. To think that "the patriarchy" is so all-powerful that it makes any display of male-on-male affection impossible -- in direct contradiction to the reality one can observe with one's eyes, any day of the week -- well, it's insane! & it leads to the conclusion that progress, or a more feminist world, is impossible. Which is what this woman & her peeps seem to think anyway.

You know, if one simply Googles "obama hugging", one gets all kinds of pictures of Obama hugging men. Shock! Gasp! Actually, I think pictures of him hugging men are a slight majority. Is he oppressing them, too? By being President and all that, he, I dunno, emasculates them, so he's really oppressing women? In that case, Georgia Bush is a discredit to her sex.

Pervtastic - I guess I'm just stubborn. I don't think of Twisty (or Cosmo, or PUA dudes, etc.) as depressing, but as the gift that keeps on giving.

I also hope, in my more grandiose moments, that crazy people can serve as extreme illustrations of delusional and destructive beliefs that more reasonable-seeming people might also hold, but eh. Mostly it's just an old habit from growing up near a beach. The weirder and grosser something is, the more I've gotta poke at it.

(They also exhibit an interesting homophobia dichotomy in that homophobic insults aimed at straight guys fly all over the place--"you're such a faggot!"--but no one harasses the actual gay guys who work here. Bob is a queer-ass butt-monkey, but Joe's cool, he's just gay.)

lastnightsclothes - Your secret is safe with me.

And Twisty doesn't want an incrementally better world, that's insufficiently dramatic and exciting and it would put her out of a job. She wants to see herself as a leader of a brave underground Resistance, and in the absence of any actual Nazis she'll just have to hallucinate some.

Oriscus - I'm aware that Twisty is a little bit parodic (although I think she also sometimes hides behind the "If it doesn't go over well, act like it was a parody" game), but I also believe that her readers are largely genuine, non-Austin, dead-serious lunatics. In many ways they interest me much more than she does.

The "if it doesn't work, it's parody" game is part-and-parcel of that Austin mindset.

Think black-helicopter-wackjob Alex Jones. He believes it in his very marrow, but he's self-consciously over-the-top in his presentation. Or for a yankeefied version, Rush Limbaugh. If you're offended, I'm joking, if not...